I think the company that comes up with a robotic pest hunter first will make a mint. A roomba or Dyson that murders mice and rats. In NYC if it just wanders around a room at night stabbing bedbugs in the head it'll be worth a king's ransom.
I'm thinking about a 6 month or so "cancel" vacation like I do with HBO Now. Once you've binged through everything you want to see there's really no good reason to just let it keep auto billing. The fact that they're increasing the price without increasing the value makes it all the more attractive.
When this comes to California (not if - this is the land of idiotic busy bodies) I'm going to bag up my trash and dump it at work. Let the trash spetsnaz ponder empty cans.
Back in the day local news used to actually do local and fairly decent investigative reporting. These days all they do is read propaganda badly disguised as press releases from city, state, federal and corporate officials. I'm going to miss the hottie weather trollops though.
Having had a few EXT3 filesystems go tits up because they've been quietly borking themselves on a 24/7/365 server being able to do a weekly "zpool scrub" in a 4TB array without the downtime is a beautiful thing. Kernel CIFS with proper ACLs and integration with ZFS snapshots is pretty great as well. When btrfs is released and gets a few miles on it I may switch back. But for now my file server stays OpenSolaris.
Make sure you don't have a "no moonlighting" clause. I used to work for a company that had one and vigorously enforced it. And I mean Security goon standing next to your desk with a box for your stuff and a quick frog march out the door style enforcement. It's a real bad time to be trashing a steady paycheck.
To think I was actually so paranoid that I missed our Datasafe offsite pickup thursday that I drove in, swapped the tapes out and took them home.
Earthquakes, building fires, meteor strikes, Super Volcano blowing. If you don't have offsite backup and redundant offsite servers Murphy's and Finagle's laws are going to spank you. Hard.
Bust the monopoly and give out per child vouchers. Also streamline the process for expelling disruptive students and exiling them to vocational schools.
I wish idiots would stop yammering about the Hindenburg every time they see the word "hydrogen". Do you spout off "Oh noes!! Remember teh Titanic!!" every time you read about coal or ice? You're way more likely to blow yourself up smoking around gasoline vapors than you would around hydrogen.
I usually tell them that they can either strike the non-compete clause or amend it to state that they'll pay me severance greater than or equal to the length of the non-compete or it's void. Intellectual property that I dream up independent of a company project is mine. Period.
About a year ago a group of friends (coders all) abandoned Northern California and went in together on a farm in Okalahoma and built a couple of extra houses on it. They've been able to drop their billable rate down to where it's still competitive without the whole third world lifestyle (but hey, it's still Okalahoma, dudes).
I'm kind of conflicted about this. Good on them for finding a way to be competitive but it's just more downward pressure on rates.
As a side note they're also ramping up to produce wind power and biodiesel (Canola - the thought of any of these four driving a tractor scares me). First stop self-sufficiency and then on to selling the surplus.
Cooperative living may be the only way to beat Corporate goons.
Well, open source linux PVRs. Closed source Proprietary Linux PVRs like Tivo will be available for a subscription fee.
What we need is to hire some lobbyists to get the US government to mandate that the standard be opened up. Otherwise we're going to be stuck with Standard Def and over the air HD.
Preferably one that's a retired cop. We've had to do this from time to time and they can cut through the PD bureaucracy and get things done. Even if you're the one doing most of the leg work it goes down better if an ex-cop is fronting for you. Police don't like uppity citizens fending for themselves.
It's even more lucrative than Y2K was to my consulting bottom line. I can't tell you the joy I feel telling management drones that I have a fee rate modifier of 1.5 to go in and "fix" (read rewrite) bad code. The stories I could tell of legacy programs that were trashed only to find out that the "new" systems just didn't work. And of one company's desperate search to (re)buy about 5 Vax 8800's just so they could limp back to where there were 10 years ago.
This year I'll have about 800 billible hours at an SF based financial management company that drank the outsourcing koolaid a in '04 and is still struggling to recover from it.
God bless outsourcing and the idiot -read it in an in flight mangazine and gee it sounded keen- managemant.
But how does it take balls? Did you expect Dubbya to have his SS guards shoot the comic in the knees? Make him "Disappear". Order the IRS to audit him?
What could the poor idiot do but sit there and take it?
I know I'm going to run afoul of all the mindless sycophants but I'm not seeing either courage or brilliance. It was a few minutes of mediocre comedy central shtick. It was a roast. Everyone and his lame and near sighted mother is taking pot shots at Dubbya. The only "risk" Colbert took was getting food poisoning from the awful food they usually serve at functions like this.
Good Grief. Has it come to this that a smarmy comic is getting accolades for his great courage?
Disclaimer: Not a republican. Not a democrat. I loath both wings of our crappy single party system equally.
Once you tally it all up it's about $20 a person to go to a 2 hour movie. These days the theaters are filled with idiots on cells and unruly, obnoxious children (from ages.5 to 75 years old).
If a theater in my area crafted a set of rules of conduct and enforced them (i.e. frog marched violators roughly out the door) they'd start to get my business again.
Until then I'm going to wait until it hits DVD and watch it at home.
Slashdot Mirror
I think the company that comes up with a robotic pest hunter first will make a mint. A roomba or Dyson that murders mice and rats. In NYC if it just wanders around a room at night stabbing bedbugs in the head it'll be worth a king's ransom.
I'm an unhappy DSL user with sonic.net but I'd switch over to two tin cans and a length of string before I sign any contract with Comcast.
I'm thinking about a 6 month or so "cancel" vacation like I do with HBO Now. Once you've binged through everything you want to see there's really no good reason to just let it keep auto billing. The fact that they're increasing the price without increasing the value makes it all the more attractive.
When this comes to California (not if - this is the land of idiotic busy bodies) I'm going to bag up my trash and dump it at work. Let the trash spetsnaz ponder empty cans.
Back in the day local news used to actually do local and fairly decent investigative reporting. These days all they do is read propaganda badly disguised as press releases from city, state, federal and corporate officials. I'm going to miss the hottie weather trollops though.
Having had a few EXT3 filesystems go tits up because they've been quietly borking themselves on a 24/7/365 server being able to do a weekly "zpool scrub" in a 4TB array without the downtime is a beautiful thing. Kernel CIFS with proper ACLs and integration with ZFS snapshots is pretty great as well. When btrfs is released and gets a few miles on it I may switch back. But for now my file server stays OpenSolaris.
Make sure you don't have a "no moonlighting" clause. I used to work for a company that had one and vigorously enforced it. And I mean Security goon standing next to your desk with a box for your stuff and a quick frog march out the door style enforcement. It's a real bad time to be trashing a steady paycheck.
To think I was actually so paranoid that I missed our Datasafe offsite pickup thursday that I drove in, swapped the tapes out and took them home.
Earthquakes, building fires, meteor strikes, Super Volcano blowing. If you don't have offsite backup and redundant offsite servers Murphy's and Finagle's laws are going to spank you. Hard.
Bust the monopoly and give out per child vouchers. Also streamline the process for expelling disruptive students and exiling them to vocational schools.
I wish idiots would stop yammering about the Hindenburg every time they see the word "hydrogen". Do you spout off "Oh noes!! Remember teh Titanic!!" every time you read about coal or ice? You're way more likely to blow yourself up smoking around gasoline vapors than you would around hydrogen.
I usually tell them that they can either strike the non-compete clause or amend it to state that they'll pay me severance greater than or equal to the length of the non-compete or it's void. Intellectual property that I dream up independent of a company project is mine. Period.
About a year ago a group of friends (coders all) abandoned Northern California and went in together on a farm in Okalahoma and built a couple of extra houses on it. They've been able to drop their billable rate down to where it's still competitive without the whole third world lifestyle (but hey, it's still Okalahoma, dudes).
I'm kind of conflicted about this. Good on them for finding a way to be competitive but it's just more downward pressure on rates.
As a side note they're also ramping up to produce wind power and biodiesel (Canola - the thought of any of these four driving a tractor scares me). First stop self-sufficiency and then on to selling the surplus.
Cooperative living may be the only way to beat Corporate goons.
Raise prices until the underclass can't afford it. Then they'll drop off and stop clogging my intraweb tubes.
And then you'll have something. As it is now it's not terribly useful.
Well, open source linux PVRs. Closed source Proprietary Linux PVRs like Tivo will be available for a subscription fee.
What we need is to hire some lobbyists to get the US government to mandate that the standard be opened up. Otherwise we're going to be stuck with Standard Def and over the air HD.
No Dish, DirectTV, or cable High Def.
I'd throw a couple hundred $'s in.
Passengers will have several minutes of weightlessness during the spaceflight, and then have about 40 seconds to return to their seats
200K for "several minutes" in space? Sorry, I'll wait until 2010 for Bigelow's space hotel.
Preferably one that's a retired cop. We've had to do this from time to time and they can cut through the PD bureaucracy and get things done. Even if you're the one doing most of the leg work it goes down better if an ex-cop is fronting for you. Police don't like uppity citizens fending for themselves.
I'd have a lot more respect for them if they'd turn their guns on the cooked books Congress and the President are keeping.
I'd much rather stick with plain "X" marks your choice paper ballots. I can stand waiting a couple of days to see which goon received the most votes.
It's even more lucrative than Y2K was to my consulting bottom line. I can't tell you the joy I feel telling management drones that I have a fee rate modifier of 1.5 to go in and "fix" (read rewrite) bad code. The stories I could tell of legacy programs that were trashed only to find out that the "new" systems just didn't work. And of one company's desperate search to (re)buy about 5 Vax 8800's just so they could limp back to where there were 10 years ago.
This year I'll have about 800 billible hours at an SF based financial management company that drank the outsourcing koolaid a in '04 and is still struggling to recover from it.
God bless outsourcing and the idiot -read it in an in flight mangazine and gee it sounded keen- managemant.
At http://www.sslexplorer.com/showSslExplorer.do
All they'll need is an SSL capable browser. You can set up all the accounts and Tunnels for them.
But how does it take balls? Did you expect Dubbya to have his SS guards shoot the comic in the knees? Make him "Disappear". Order the IRS to audit him?
What could the poor idiot do but sit there and take it?
I know I'm going to run afoul of all the mindless sycophants but I'm not seeing either courage or brilliance. It was a few minutes of mediocre comedy central shtick. It was a roast. Everyone and his lame and near sighted mother is taking pot shots at Dubbya. The only "risk" Colbert took was getting food poisoning from the awful food they usually serve at functions like this.
Good Grief. Has it come to this that a smarmy comic is getting accolades for his great courage?
Disclaimer: Not a republican. Not a democrat. I loath both wings of our crappy single party system equally.
Once you tally it all up it's about $20 a person to go to a 2 hour movie. These days the theaters are filled with idiots on cells and unruly, obnoxious children (from ages .5 to 75 years old).
If a theater in my area crafted a set of rules of conduct and enforced them (i.e. frog marched violators roughly out the door) they'd start to get my business again.
Until then I'm going to wait until it hits DVD and watch it at home.
Manmohan Singh would probably make a much better president than our wee George.
I'm sure we can retrain him for an exciting career in fry cookery.